It seems like no matter how I scroll I find bad news. I know lots of things are happening but I just want funny memes and interesting stories.

I used to be able to get this back in the day on the Reddit app feed, but here the all page is always just depressing stuff. Back then, there was news and stuff but like it felt more balanced in the all feed. I could get bad stuff but lots of interesting stuff too .

I find myself engaging less and less and just avoiding Lemmy more and more since I know the moment I open it I’ll get whacked with more depressing stuffs.

I don’t want politics or world news or really even memes about that stuff anymore. Heck even tech news is depressing. I just want simple scrolling of fun content. Idk it’s just hard to describe.

Does anyone else feel this way about their Lemmy experience?

I remember an old post about someone getting AM radio from their sink (probably from Reddit back in the day). That type of stuff is so much cooler than my feed.

To that end: any recommended active communities on Lemmy with that type of stuff?

  • YungOnions@lemmy.world
    3·
    28 days ago

    You are 100% correct, negative news has a greater impact on people than positive: https://assets.csom.umn.edu/assets/71516.pdf

    Media sites know this, and use it to drive engagement:

    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4 https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/social-media-facebook-twitter-politics-b1870628.html

    And so, negative headlines are getting worse: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0276367

    But negative news is addictive and psychologically damaging: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/why-we-worry/202009/the-psychological-impact-negative-news

    So it’s important to try and stay positive:

    https://www.goodgoodgood.co/articles/benefits-of-good-news

    If you want a break from the constant negativity, here are some sites that report specifically on positive news:

    And here’s 35 more: https://news.feedspot.com/good_news_websites/

    Some communities on Lemmy you might be interested in:

    Remember, realistic optimism is important and, unlike what some might have you believe, is not the same as blissful ignorance or ‘burying your head in the sand’: https://www.learning-mind.com/realistic-optimism-blind-positivity/

    https://www.centreforoptimism.com/realisticoptimism

    And doesn’t mean you must stay uninformed on current affairs: https://www.goodgoodgood.co/articles/how-to-stop-doom-scrolling

    https://goodable.co/blog/tips-for-balancing-positive-and-negative-news/

  • Churbleyimyam@lemm.ee
    2·
    28 days ago

    In your Lemmy account settings, set your default feed to ‘subscribed’ instead of ‘all’.

    When you open the app or log in on your browser you will only see communities you’ve subscribed to.

    It will greatly improve your (and everyone else’s) experience if you subscribe to positive communties and participate in them.

  • Libb@jlai.luEnglish
    1·
    28 days ago

    Does anyone else feel this way about their Lemmy experience?

    The out of the box experience is not great (neither is Reddit, if you’re asking me, it’s at least as depressing to see the amount of trash/low effort posts on their home page). But once I switched to ‘Subscribed’ only view, things were already much better since I was only seeing content I was interested in (aka no politics or drama of any sort).

    As already suggested: [email protected] is good place to see what’s new, also there is [email protected]

    Most importantly, Lemmy is not Reddit for many reasons but this one is more directly related to your question: it’s much smaller (to give you an idea, I moderate a journaling community we recently reached… 300 members (of which less than a handful is active), whereas the Reddit journaling community is 2 Million+ ;). So, there is a lot less content posted on Lemmy. Back on Reddit, I was mostly a commenter (barely posting anything new myself) but I quickly realized that if I wanted to see stuff I was interested in on Lemmy I better start… posting myself ;)

  • Free_Opinions@feddit.uk
    1·
    28 days ago

    This is why Lemmy will never become popular with the mainstream untill these people get their shit together. No sane person wants to browse a feed like mine despite the great lenghts I go attempting to block all politics and rage bait. I can only imagine how bad it is for someone just following the most popular communities and expecting a feed similar to that of Reddit.

    If you don’t want to leave then I think the second best option is to keep calling out these users poisoning the platform. Just be aware that there is going to be a lot hate coming your way then. This place is filled to the brim with extremists.

      • MajorHavoc@programming.dev
        1·
        28 days ago

        Same. I try to always block at least 3 new sports team channels before breakfast, so that the sport ball updates don’t completely overwhelm my brief trips into all.

        I love that this is a great place for local sports, but it’s not my thing.

  • Meldrik@lemmy.wtf
    1·
    28 days ago

    Why don’t you just keep away from c/all and stick to your subscribed communities?

    To discover new communities, I suggest subscribing to c/newcommunities

  • morgunkorn@discuss.tchncs.de
    1·
    28 days ago

    i blocked every single news and politics communities, as well as all the “*** infuriating” ones, it has drastically improved the content of my timeline :)

  • HotCoffee@lemm.ee
    1·
    28 days ago

    Yeah lemmy has bit too much political content. Americans seem very obsessed with it. I just kept blocking all of them and now my feed is pretty free of political nonsense. If I want that kind of content i’ll just read the news paper or go to my news feed of choice

    • baggachipz@sh.itjust.works
      0·
      28 days ago

      To be fair, a large slice of the user base is in the US and currently everything is collapsing around us. It should come as no surprise that we complain about it a lot. The mods of various communities could certainly enforce rules more; e.g. in shitposting or memes, remove any political content. It would help the situation.

      • HotCoffee@lemm.ee
        0·
        28 days ago

        Lol than your country has been collapsing for the last 2+ years, cus it’s always dominated by politics on lemmy.

        It’s a difficult balance to strike, since enforcing content also feels like going against the foss ethos… It’s tricky. But just keep promoting Lemmy and the fediverse and some day we will have a more balanced experience

    • doingthestuff@lemy.lolEnglish
      0·
      28 days ago

      Unfortunately there’s almost nothing left once you’ve blocked all that. I’m close to leaving. No one will miss me, whatever. Occasionally I have a nice interaction though.

      • HotCoffee@lemm.ee
        1·
        28 days ago

        Won’t argue with that, 70% is Linux and Politics combined. I do enjoy the “small scale forum” feel, but indeed after scrolling for 30 minutes you will probaly have consumed most of the content for the coming 48hours. After that, shamefully admitting, it’s back to reddit and tiktok.

    • HotCoffee@lemm.ee
      2·
      28 days ago

      Yes and no, since lemmy has a smaller user base certain type of content will have a much higher presence than reddit. And when 5 instances are all posting from the same source, that will saturate the platform.

      If every new user immediately gets turned off by it, because curating your homepage is like step 2, then lemmy will continue struggling with retaining new users.

      • CarbonBasedNPU@lemm.eeEnglish
        2·
        28 days ago

        Lemmy doesn’t really have enough users for the same type of mindless only scrolling in communities you like from what I’ve seen. On reddit I’m subscribed to 2 drama subs Gentoo sub and a few others. There is enough content in that for me to just scroll that instead of all.

        on the other hand here I find my subscriptions literally don’t get new posts. It’s fine I’m getting used to it but it means I’m using the all equivalent far more often.

  • thezeesystem@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    0·
    28 days ago

    I use voyager and block words phrases and instances that bring that stuff up. And sometimes users who repeatedly do it too.

    I’m also on Lemmy blahaj which don’t know if that matters. But over time I rarely have a lot of depressing political things in my feed anymore. Just every so often.

    I have another account on Lemmy world for political things already I rarely use it.

    • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      28 days ago

      I’m also on Lemmy blahaj which don’t know if that matters

      It does. If your home instance blocks other instances then you’ll never see their posts, regardless of your settings.

      I don’t believe there’s a native way to see these blocks in Lemmy, you’d have to look at a third party site that tracks that sort of thing.

      • Dave@lemmy.nz
        1·
        28 days ago

        If your instance blocks other instances, they are listed on the “blocked” tab of the Instances page (the link is in the footer).

        E.g. for lemmy.world https://lemmy.world/instances

        Remember that spam instances are a thing, and are often what is being blocked by admins.

  • IronKrill@lemmy.ca
    0·
    27 days ago

    Step 1: don’t browse the All feed. I dunno how Reddit was okay for you, visiting r/all was always full of Trump this Trump that every 5 minutes.

    • wirelesswire@lemmy.zipEnglish
      1·
      27 days ago

      At least Reddit had a nice feature where you could filter out up to 100 communities from r/all. I could still get a varied experience while not having to look at things like politics, sportsball, or games I didn’t care for.